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The commander in the parenting wars is one big mother—Nature. Nothing synthetic is gentle enough for our precious bundles, the way our ancestors did everything is romanticized, and the earth mother reigns supreme.

“If you were on an island and you had no mother-in-laws, no psychologists, no doctors around, no experts, this is what you would naturally and instinctively do to give your baby the best investment,” said leading attachment parenting proponent Dr. William Sears in 2012. (When it comes to the natural parenting movement, attachment parenting is king…or perhaps queen is most fitting.)

With early roots in attachment theory, initially based on primate research and observations of cultures in the developing world, those who follow natural parenting make appeals to vaguely non-western traditions, whether or not these traditions are widely-practiced or proven beneficial. Much of what people think is "natural parenting" isn't really what nature "intended" or what indigenous people did at all, rather it's the romanticized version of natural.

In the early 20th century laboring mothers were often given a combination of drugs that provided pain relief and induced amnesia, called “Twilight Birth.” The newborn was handed over to a mother with no memory of having delivered it. This method, then heralded as ushering in a “new era” of obstetrics, is now viewed as misogynistic and paternalistic. But the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction, with today’s expectations of women giving birth no less denigrating than a hundred years ago.

In nearly all cultures, a healthy baby and a healthy mom are the most important outcomes of birth. Not necessarily so in the natural parenting movement. With natural parenting, “birth experience” reigns supreme, though whether it’s really about benefit for mom and baby or bragging rights is hardly clear. The rules of natural childbirth include avoiding induction to start contractions, but most important is forgoing epidurals for pain relief.

“Women are inherently capable of giving birth, have a deep, intuitive instinct about birth, and, when supported and free to find comfort, are able to give birth without interventions and without suffering,” writes Judith Lothian in the Journal of Perinatal Education, a publication of Lamaze International (most people don’t realize that Lamaze has communist origins, when the Soviet Union could not afford widespread use of pain medications).

That the suffering of childbirth is all in a woman’s head, not real but a consequence of conditioning against our natural instincts, is a popular meme in the natural parenting community. It has no basis in reality or in an equal society. When’s the last time we asked a man to pass a kidney stone or endure a migraine without pain relief because it’s “natural”?

Natural childbirth proponents argue that epidurals impede a mother’s ability to push and increase the risk of the dreaded C-section. Though likelihood of C-section may be linked to epidural use, there is no evidence that epidurals themselves are the cause. As Melinda Wenner Moyer explained in a comprehensive piece on epidurals in Slate:

“The studies that have suggested this effect have been observational, reporting that women who choose epidurals are more likely to have C-sections than women who don’t. But the women who requested epidurals in these studies tended to be different from the ones who had natural childbirths: For example, they were more likely to have had painful, difficult labors—on account of carrying large babies or those in abnormal positions, or because their labors were induced.”

In other words, if you have an epidural and a C-section, it may very well be that whatever caused the increased pain that led you to request relief would have necessitated a C-section anyway. And make no mistake, women who have C-sections aren’t failures.

The overarching message from the natural parenting world for anyone who “fails” to avoid medical interventions during childbirth is a dire one: You didn’t try hard enough. You weren’t strong enough. You weren’t woman enough.

“Breast is best.” With the American Academy of Pediatrics and WorldHealthOrganization recommending exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months, the mantra is solidly-established in the public psyche. Lower incidence of allergies, asthma and illness, and increased IQ and wages are all linked to breastfeeding, but is “liquid gold” superior enough to warrant the rampant shaming of moms who choose not to or are unable to breastfeed? Indeed, the pressure to provide breastmilk is so strong that some even turn to risky,unregulated online breastmilk sharingforums or opt forhomemade concoctions as a more natural alternative to store bought formula, both of which deeply disturb pediatricians and experts.

Though studies suggest benefits, breast milk is only marginally better than formula when taking confounding factors into account. (It’s important to note that this is only in the developed world, where we have access to safe drinking waterwith which to prepare formula.)

Does breastfeeding itself lead to better outcomes? My breastfed kids, for example, may or may not end up with fewer health problems, better academic performance or higher wages than the average formula-fed child. If that happens, I’ll probably chalk it up to their growing up financially stable and with access to quality healthcare, with parents who don’t smoke, have a strong relationship and live in the same household, and who read to them regularly. Would the trajectories of their lives be different if they’d been formula-fed?

Studies comparing families with one breastfed child and one formula-fed child help answer this question, because outside of breastfeeding, other factors remain largely the same within families. The authors of a 2014 Ohio State University sibling study say that the benefits typically attributed to breastfeeding itself “may primarily be due to selection pressures into infant feeding practices along key demographic characteristics such as race and socioeconomic status.”

Commercially-available infant formulas are safe and nutritious for babies with access to clean drinking water, with the FDA carefully regulating composition to be nearly identical to breastmilk. Yet the natural parenting movement dictates that good moms must breastfeed. “You're a mammal. You're built to lactate. When it fails, that's sad. When it's ignored, that's a travesty defying nature and human biology,” says a popular August 28thpiece in PopSugar.

We are not our biology. The right to control our biology is a huge part of what women have fought for and continue to demand.

It’s noteworthy that the most prominent international breastfeeding advocacy organization, La Leche League explicitly opposed mothers taking employment outside the home as recently as the 1980s. Even today, LLL addresses their local group leaders’ penchant for judging women who work outside the home.

Breastmilk is not only natural but also free, natural parenting proponents argue. It’s not. As Mary Brock explained at the Grounded Parents blog(where I also contribute), “By saying that breast milk is free, you are undervaluing a mother’s time, physical and mental costs, and actual financial costs to sustain breastfeeding.” A 2012 study published in American Sociological Review examined mothers’ earning losses and other financial costs of breastfeeding for six months or longer.

Breastfeeding can certainly be valuable, even if the benefits are vastly overblown. The important thing is that a mother feel free to choose to invest her time and energy to breastfeed or not without fear of judgement no matter her reasons, whether she’s a former breast cancer patient with no milk ducts, experiences pain with breastfeeding, is a sexual assault survivor, or she simply doesn’t want to.

3. Likening mothers to animals.

I’ve touched on this one already. In so many ways, the natural parenting and AP movements appeal to women’s most intrinsic physical attributes, often misguidedly invoking the way mammals birth and raise their young. Take the placenta for example. Natural birth proponents swear by consuming the filter organs post birth, touting benefits like reduced incidence of postpartum depression, increased energy and improved lactation. Natural parenting businesses cash in on the trend with placenta encapsulation services, while other new moms sip placenta smoothies or tincture, or even chew a piece right after giving birth.

Proponents argue that placentophagy is natural, since most mammals do it. This is true, but it’s largely because most mammals in the wild can’t devote energy to acquiring food after giving birth and to throw predators off the scent. There are very few human cultures, contemporary or earlier, who consume the organ as a practice. There is also no benefit to the practice in humans.

But these facts don’t stop natural parenting advocates from, perhaps inadvertently, dehumanizing women. Moms don’t need real medicine when they have a placenta to eat, just like nature intended.

Or consider co-sleeping. Natural parenting proponents insist that mammals have slept snuggled with their young for millions of years, and therefore so should human mothers. Well-known natural parenting advocate Mayim Bialik invokes our mammalian instincts in her co-sleeping advocacy. “Nature designed it so that mammal mothers would drop everything to tend to their crying baby. Any sleep training or sleep modification regimen that involves your baby crying and you not tending to it is going against your natural mammalian wiring,” she writes.

Two things, Mayim: 1- My kids have slept in their own rooms since they were a few months old and they’re just fine and 2- My sleep and autonomy are important, mammalian wiring or not.

The natural-is-better fallacy runs deep in this day and age, ironically fueled by the internet information glut. As a mom, I don’t fall for it. Your great-great-great (great-great ...) grandmother did things naturally because she had no choice. Now we have choices. I choose not to take advice on what’s most natural and therefore best for me and my children from a movement that prefers me barefoot making an all-natural from-scratch meal, strapped to a nursing baby that I birthed in agony so I can prove my all-natural worth. As long as my children know their parents love them, and see that a woman and mother is more than her most base instincts and valued for more than the functions of her reproductive organs? The kids will be alright.

Kavin Senapathy is a science communicator and mom of two living in Madison, Wisconsin. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

I am an author and public speaker covering science, health, medicine, agriculture, food, parenting and their intersection. I'm a proud Science Mom, and am featured in the new documentary (sciencemomsdoc.com) about moms seeking to raise their children with facts rather than t...